science

PHOIBLE

PHOIBLE is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand PHOIBLE rather than just read about it. In short: PHOIBLE (short for "Phonetics Information Base and Lexicon") is a linguistic database accessible through its website and compiling phonological inventories from primary documents and tertiary databases into a single, easily searchable sample. The 2019 version 2.0 includes 3,020 inventories containing 3,183 segment types found in 2,186 distinct languages.

Key takeaways

PHOIBLE belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect PHOIBLE to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of PHOIBLE from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

PHOIBLE (short for "Phonetics Information Base and Lexicon") is a linguistic database accessible through its website and compiling phonological inventories from primary documents and tertiary databases into a single, easily searchable sample. The 2019 version 2.0 includes 3,020 inventories containing 3,183 segment types found in 2,186 distinct languages. It is edited by Steven Moran, Assistant Professor from the Institute of Biology at the University of Neuchâtel and Daniel McCloy, Researcher at the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences at the University of Washington.

Principles of PHOIBLE Rather than imposing a single system of describing languages, PHOIBLE attempts to be faithful to the various description methods found in source documents, the varieties in which are distinguished as "doculects", and to encode all character data in a consistent representation according to the Unicode API. Its data is published under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 licence (CC BY-SA 3.0).

Organisation of the database

The website is very similar to those of Glottolog, WALS and APiCS. Since the release of PHOIBLE 2.0 in 2019, the data is taken from the Cross-Linguistic Data Formats (CLDF) dataset of the Cross-Linguistic Linked Data (CLLD) project. The languages are classified by family, geographical coordinates and world regions (Africa, North and South America, Australia, Eurasia and Papunesia). The individual language pages include geographical information from Glottolog, with a link to its site with the glottocode of the language, and another with the ISO 639-3 code pointing to that of SIL. They also include links to one or more phoneme inventories, with associated bibliographic records for each source. Multiple entries are based on separate sources that disagree on the number and/or identity of phonemes in the language. In addition to phoneme inventories, PHOIBLE includes distinctive feature data for each phoneme in each language. This system is loosely based on Hayes' Introductory Phonology with some additions from Moisik and Esling's The 'whole larynx' approach to laryngeal features, but may change as new languages are added. A subset of 451 languages in PHOIBLE comes from the UCLA Phonological Segment Inventory Database (UPSID), whose author, Ian Maddieson, is a contributor to the chapter on phonology in WALS.

References

Bibliography Forkel, Robert (February 14, 2019). "PHOIBLE 2.0 released". clld.org. Cross-Linguistic Linked Data. Hayes, Bruce (2011). Introductory Phonology (PDF). Blackwell. ISBN 9781444360134. List, Johann-Mattis; Forkel, Robert; Greenhill, Simon J.; Rzymski, Christoph; Englisch, Johannes; Russell D., Russell D. (16 June 2022). "Lexibank, a public repository of standardized wordlists with computed phonological and lexical features" (PDF). Scientific Data. 9 (316). doi:10.1038/s41597-022-01432-0. ISSN 2052-4463. S2CID 239629792. Moisik, Scott R.; Esling, John H. (2011). The 'whole larynx' approach to laryngeal features (PDF). ICPhS XVII. pp. 1406–1409. Moran, Steven (2012). Phonetics Information Base and Lexicon (PDF) (PhD thesis). University of Washington. hdl:1773/22452.

External links Official website Psmith, search tool for the PHOIBLE database

Illustrations

PHOIBLE logo

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with PHOIBLE

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what PHOIBLE claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to PHOIBLE before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about PHOIBLE ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of PHOIBLE

In research: PHOIBLE appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses PHOIBLE in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: PHOIBLE is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Cross-Linguistic Linked Data, Linguistics databases, Linguistics websites, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for PHOIBLE outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study PHOIBLE in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what PHOIBLE means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain PHOIBLE out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is PHOIBLE in simple terms?

Why does PHOIBLE matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study PHOIBLE?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on PHOIBLE.